The opinions are typically passed as ratings to a central place where all perceptions, opinions and ratings can be accumulated. A reputation center uses a specific reputation algorithm to dynamically compute the reputation scores based on the received ratings. Reputation is a sign of trustworthiness manifested as testimony by other people.

New expectations and realities about the transparency, availability, and privacy of people and institutions are emerging. Reputation management – the selective exposure of personal information and activities – is an important element to how people function in networks as they establish credentials, build trust with others, and gather information to deal with problems or make decisions.

Reputation Systems are related to recommender systems and collaborative filtering, but with the difference that Reputation Systems produce scores based on explicit ratings from the community, whereas recommender systems use some external set of entities and events (such as the purchase of books, movies, or music) to generate marketing recommendations to users. The role of Reputation Systems is to facilitate trust, and often functions by making the reputation more visible.